Soybeans are one of the richest natural food sources of protein known today. Because of their high protein nutritional value, and they can satisfy the protein requirements for all age groups. Present economic conditions worldwide have prompted an increased concern for producing more protein on available land; thus, the production of soybeans as a low cost alternative usable protein source is increasing.
In spite of their high protein content, soybeans as naturally found are not a delectable food for humans because of their bitter flavor, high density and, inter alia, the presence of trypsin inhibitors preventing protein digestion. Although worldwide demand is increasing, especially in third world nations, domestic utilization of soybeans is somewhat limited because of these objectionable natural characteristics. Thus, agriprocessors are confronted with problems relating to providing soybeans with desirable physical and taste characteristics suitable for application to a wide variety of foods.
Various attempts are known to prevent development of the soybeans bitter off flavor. One such attempt is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,594,185 to Hawley et al., wherein complete soybeans (i.e. whole soybeans with the hulls intact enclosing the cotyledons) are subjected to dry heating at high temperatures to initiate hull cracking, followed by immersion of the beans in water to remove the hulls and thereafter boiling for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes to remove the bitter flavor. While this prior method may be successful to dehull and remove bitter flavor from whole beans, the requirement of dry heating, then boiling treatment in a water bath for the above time interval is relatively expensive from the standpoint of energy consumption. More importantly, however, the resulting moist product, as occurs after water bath treatment or by debittering with other prior art methods, does not appear ready for immediate consumer use; further processing is necessary to adequately texturize the whole bean, such as roasting and grinding so that the soybeans can be mixed with other ingredients, forming commercially available soy-based food products, often quite expensive to the consumer.
Another problem which appears to limit widespread use of soybeans is the absence for retail sale of basic debittereed soy material (i.e. consisting basically of soy without added ingredients) intended for direct use by consumers in their own recipes. For dietary or personal reasons, consumers often desire to use the soybean in their recipes. However, to my knowledge soybeans or soybean grits as presently available for retain sale are not debittered, limiting their popularity in recipes. If basic debittered soy products were available to the public without having been previously processed into other foods, either for retail sale or for home preparation using relatively inexpensive store-bought undebittered soy, this inventor believes that consumer demand for soybeans would greatly increase.